Oolichan Spring 2011 Catalogue
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Oolichan Books Spring Titles 2011 1 Award Winning Oolichan Books 2010 Finalists Congratulations to Betty Jane Hegerat for being shortlisted for the Georges Bugnet Award for Fiction, the Alberta Book Awards 2010 for Delivery. Congratulations to Miranda Pearson for her nomination of Harbour for the BC Book Awards Dorothy Livesay Award. 2009 Winner Oolichan Books would like to congratulate Bruce Hunter for winning the 2009 Banff Mountain Book Festival’s Canadian Rockies Award for his book In The Bear’s House. Governor General’s Award for Poetry The Literary Network Top Ten Canadian Poetry Books 2006 John Pass, Stumbling In The Bloom, Winner 1999 Mona Fertig, Sex, Death & Travel 2005 W.H. New, Underwood Log, Finalist QSPELL Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-Fiction 2004 David Manicom, The Burning Eaves, Finalist 1998 David Manicom 2001 John Pass, Water Stair, Finalist Progeny of Ghosts: Travels in Russia and the Old Empire., Winner Governor General’s Award for Fiction QSPELL A.M. Klein Award for Poetry 1993 Carol Windley, Visible Light, Short List 1998 David Manicom. The Older Graces, Finalist BC Book Prizes - Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize Viacom Canada Writers’ Trust Non-Fiction Prize 2010 Miranda Pearson, Harbour, Finalist 1998 David Manicom 2009 Nilofar Shidmehr, Shrin and Salt Man, Finalist Progeny of Ghosts: Travels in Russia and the Old Empire., Finalist 2008 George McWhirter, The Incorrection, Finalist 2005 Eve Joseph, The Startled Heart, Finalist Gerald Lampert Memorial Prize 2001 John Pass, Water Stair, Finalist 1997 Margo Button, The Unhinging of Wings, Finalist 1997 Margo Button, The Unhinging of Wings, Winner Saskatchewan Book Awards Book of the Year 1995 Aaron Bushkowsky, ed & mabel go to the moon, Short List 1997 Ven Begamudré, Laterna Magika, Short List Alberta Book Awards - Georges Bugnet Award for Fiction 1993 Ven Begamudré, Van de Graaff Days, Short List 2010 Betty Jane Hegerar, Delivery, Finalist Saskatchewan Book Awards Fiction Prize BC Book Prizes - Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize 1997 Ven Begamudré, Laterna Magika, Short List 2009 Andreas Schroeder, Renovating Heaven, Finalist City of Regina Prize 2000 Keith Harrison, Furry Creek, Finalist 1997 Ven Begamudré, Laterna Magika, Co-recipient 1995 Grant Buday, Under Glass, Short List 1993 Ven Begamudré, Van de Graaff Days, Short List 1993 Carol Windley, Visible Light, Short List Commonwealth Writers Prize “Best Book” Saskatchewan Young Readers Choice Shining Willow Award For writers published in Canada and Caribbean 2009 Ron Smith & Ruth Campbell, Elf the Eagle, Nominated 1997 Ven Begamudré, Laterna Magika, Short List Danuta Gleed Award 1993 Greg Hollingshead, White Buick, Short List 2008 Valerie Stetson, The Year I Got Impatient, Runner-up Certificate of Honour, BC Historical Foundation 1998 Janina Hornosty. Snackers, Finalist 1996 Jan Peterson, Cathedral Grove Christie Harris Illustrated Children’s Literature Prize Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Prize 2008 Ron Smith & Ruth Campbell, Elf the Eagle, Finalist 1996 Constance Horne, Emily Carr’s Woo, Short List Lansdowne Poetry Award Bumbershoot/Weyerhaeuser Publication Award 2007 Laurie Block, Time Out of Mind, Winner 1993 Oolichan Books: Ron Smith/Carol Windley, Visible Light Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry Writers Guild of Alberta Short Fiction Prize 2002 Marilyn Dumont, green girl dreams Mountains, Winner 1993 Greg Hollingshead, White Buick, Winner Gillian Lowndes Award 2001 John Pass, Water Stair, Finalist 2 The Boy Betty Jane Hegerat ISBN 978-088982-275-7 • 5.5” x 8.5” • pb • 280 pp • $21.95 • Fiction • April 2011 In 1959 Ray and Daisy Cook and their five children were brutally slain in their modest home in the central Alberta town of Stettler. Robert Raymond Cook, Ray Cook’s son from his first marriage, was convicted of the crime, and had the infamy of becoming the last man hanged in Alberta. Forty-six years later, a troublesome character named Louise in a story that Betty Jane Hegerat finds herself inexplicably reluctant to write, becomes entangled in the childhood memory of hearing about that gruesome mass murder. Through four years of obsessively tracking the demise of the Cook family, and dancing around the fate of the fictional family, the problem that will not go away is how to bring the story to the page. A work of non-fiction about the Cooks and their infamous son, or a novel about Louise and her problem stepson? Both stories keep coming back to the boy. Part memoir, part investigation, part novella, part writer’s journal, The Boy, is the author’s final capitulation to telling the story with all of the troublesome questions unanswered. “Among the things I like best about this book is its steady, sure- handed tone and style. Hegerat’s unconventional approach to its subject - what turns a boy into a killer, applied obliquely to the case of the last man hanged in Alberta, Robert Raymond Cook - yields truths that otherwise could be only guessed at. We’ll never know any answers for sure, but Hegerat’s meditation gives us a different, useful, and wise angle.” - Sharon Butala, author of The Girl in Saskatoon Betty Jane Hegerat has been a social worker, a teacher, and a serious student of fiction. She has studied at the University of Alberta, University of Calgary, Sage Hill, the Banff Centre, and the University of British Columbia where she completed an MFA in Creative Writing. Domesticity, the messy dynamics of family, the search for “home”, and a deep-rooted love of the Alberta landscape underpin her stories and her obsession with finding truth through examining the secrets and lies in ordinary lives. Betty Jane teaches creative writing for Continuing Education at the University of Calgary, and the Alexandra Writers Centre and was the 2009 Writer in Residence at the Memorial Park Library. Her book Delivery (Oolichan, 2009) was short-listed for the 2010 Georges Bugnet Award for Fiction. Marketing Overview • Review copies to select media outlets and periodicals • Advertizing in select trade and regional publications in Western Canada and Ontario • Author tour of Alberta & British Columbia • Social media and web-based promotions targeted at specific demographics based on projected audience appeal 3 The Gate Michael Elcock ISBN 978-088982272-6 • 5.5” x 8.5” • pb • 224 pp • $18,95 • Fiction • April 2011 The Gate is a love story and a tragedy centred on the search by Etienne Rochefort, a Canadian, for information about his past. Rochefort receives shattering information about his origins at his grandmother’s deathbed—origins which lie in the dying days of World War Two Europe. These revelations set him off on a search for his past, against his better judgment and, initially, his own interest. The story begins in the Pemberton Valley, north of Vancouver, and while most of the characters in it are fictitious, most of the events are not. The plot plays off actual events—includ- ing secret service activities only recently de-classified—and in some cases, actual people. It recounts an epic tale of Roche- fort’s parents, their love and their efforts as part of the French resisitance fighting against the occupying Germans. It is a tale of happiness, and such sorrow as can only be partially rem- edied by the efforts of an outstanding and compassionate hu- manitarian, the Catholic Abbé Musty of Bastogne in Belgium. The unexpected events of war force the Abbé and his young students to escape across the hard-frozen, war-torn landscape. Inevitably, the story involves advancing German forces and the sinister depredations of the Gestapo and Heinrich Him- mler’s Sicherheitsdienst. “Meticulous research and a cinematic sensibility have endowed The Gate with authentic power. The novel recreates the last year of the Second World War by focusing on a handful of individu- als and how their lives were changed by the German occupa- tion of France and Belgium, and I believe that Michael Elcock realizes his aim – to make us remember a period that is nearly forgotten, and must be recalled so that it never happens again.” Isabel Huggan - Author of Belonging: Home Away from Home, winner of the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction Michael Elcock was born in Forres, Scotland and grew up in Edinburgh and West Africa. He emigrated to Canada when he was twenty-one and worked in pulp mills, in the woods, on west coast fishing boats and as a ski instructor, earning along the way a B.A. and M.Ed at the University of Victoria. He was Athletic Director at UVic for ten years, and then CEO of Tourism Victoria for five. In 1990 he moved to Andalu- sia to work on developing Spain’s Expo 92. He has published Marketing Overview articles in periodicals, newspapers and magazines in Canada • Review copies to select media outlets and periodicals and overseas. Elcock has published two works of non-fiction, • Advertizing in select trade and regional publications A Perfectly Beautiful Place (Oolichan, 2004) and Writing On • Author tour of Alberta & British Columbia Stone (Oolichan, 2006). He lives just outside of Victoria, BC. • Social media and web-based promotions 4 Snowdrift Lisa McGonigle ISBN 9780889822719 • 5.5” x 8.5”” • pb • 296 pp • $18.95 • Travelogue • January 2011 Newly graduated from university in Ireland, Lisa McGonigle came to the Kootenay region of British Columbia to spend a winter snow- boarding. She wrote emails to her friends back home describing a remote mountain-town called Fernie, a series of smashes in the ter- rain park, unrivalled powder turns, working for minimum-wage and duct-taping over the holes in her outerwear. She left to take up a PhD scholarship to Oxford but the lure of the snow was too much. Several months later she abandoned her laptop, clothes and bike in Oxford and ran away back to BC.